Letter: Chrome's owner was right

Chrome's owner was right

Even though California Chrome owner Steve Coburn, undoubtedly feeling the pressure of the entire horse racing community, recanted his emotional post race rant, he made a valid point. It isn't fair to the horses who had run the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes to be forced to compete in the Belmont against fresher horses who hadn't.

You could fill several volumes with what I don't know about horse racing, but there's an inescapable logic to what Coburn had to say.

To put it in human terms, in the Olympics, can you imagine the uproar if three 100 meter sprinters, who had qualified for the final by competing in recent preliminary rounds, were then required to run against a group of equally talented athletes who hadn't run competitively in weeks?

In recent years horse racing, for whatever reason, has fallen out of favor with the American public. Race tracks around the country are closing in response to a dwindling fan base, Vallejo's Solano County Fair track being one of the more recent casualties. Horse racing needs a Triple Crown winner to reclaim past glory, and Coburn's probably right when he says current rules allowing unfair competition will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for it to happen.

So, either allow only those horses who had accumulated enough qualifying points, and competed in the Kentucky Derby, to then run in the Preakness and Belmont or, separate the three races by a month or more to give adequate recovery time to all the horses involved.

From the first Triple Crown winner, Sir Barton in 1919, to the last, Affirmed in 1978, there were nine in between. That's eleven winners in 59 years. It's now 37 years and counting. Something's changed in the Sport of Kings — and not for the better.